Brain Storm (Death Investigator Angela Richman) Read online

  PRAISE FOR BRAIN STORM

  “A very powerful and unusual novel. I think you’ve got everything here that a reader loves—a hospital drama and thriller, a strong central character. Made much more interesting because the central character is a very unreliable narrator.”

  —Ann Cleeves, international bestselling author of the Vera Stanhope and Shetland series

  “Elaine Viets has written the exciting first book in a multilayered crime novel series. Angela Richman is not only an investigator but a victim in this complex novel of crime, punishment, and medical malfeasance.”

  —Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  “Elaine Viets’s newest is both a timely medical drama and a compelling mystery. Brain Storm gives us a detailed look at the shattered life of a determined death investigator. Readers will want more of Angela Richman’s adventures.”

  —Jeff Abbott, New York Times bestselling author of The First Order

  “In Brain Storm, Elaine Viets takes a dangerous turn down a dark alley but manages it with panache and a touch of humor. Angela Marie Richman is a kick-ass protagonist who is victimized by the thing we all fear most—our own mortality. This is territory Viets knows well, and she does a fine job of showing the readers the terrain, all while entertaining them.”

  —Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

  “Trapped in a nightmarish world after suffering six strokes, death investigator Angela Richman finds she can’t trust anyone—including her own mind. A thrilling, suspenseful, twist-filled read that kept me up late into the night, Brain Storm marks a fascinating new direction for a wonderfully talented writer.”

  —Alison Gaylin, USA TODAY bestselling author of the Brenna Spector series

  “Haunting and creepy, with a fast-paced, twisty plot, and a protagonist you will not soon forget—this is Elaine Viets at her most deliciously dark.”

  —David Ellis, Edgar Award winner and author of Breach of Trust and nine other novels

  “I’ve been a fan of Elaine Viets’s books since she debuted her leather-clad heroine Francesca Vierling. And now I am delighted to see her give us another strong female character we can root for—death investigator Angela Richman. I’m also stoked to see Elaine venture into darker territory with Brain Storm, a multilayered mystery that is rich in its sense of place and character and propelled with medical intrigue. Brain Storm has everything I love in crime fiction—complexity, intelligence, pretzel-plotting, and a touch of dark humor.”

  —P.J. Parrish, New York Times bestselling author of Thomas and Mercer’s She’s Not There and the award-winning Louis Kincaid series

  “With Brain Storm, Elaine Viets offers readers a rare gem, a mystery that not only engages the head but also compels the heart. Following a near-fatal stroke, death investigator Angela Richman must struggle to regain her physical and mental health, while at the same time trying to solve the murder of the inept doctor she blames for her predicament. Drawing on her own experience, Viets chronicles the harrowing journey back from the brink of death. And perhaps the most amazing aspect of the novel is that in the midst of such terrible darkness, Viets manages to deliver hilarious one-liners any comedian would envy.”

  —William Kent Krueger, Edgar Award–winning author of the New York Times bestseller Ordinary Grace

  “A huge welcome to Angela Marie Richman, an edgy death investigator with a rapier wit and even sharper powers of observation, who makes her debut in Elaine Viets’s Brain Storm. I loved the deadpan humor from this character, a tough broad who’s survived with a vengeance and has scores to settle.”

  —Hallie Ephron, New York Times bestselling author of Night Night, Sleep Tight

  OTHER TITLES BY ELAINE VIETS

  Dead-End Job Mysteries

  Shop Till You Drop

  Murder Between the Covers

  Dying to Call You

  Just Murdered

  Murder Unleashed

  Murder with Reservations

  Clubbed to Death

  Killer Cuts

  Half-Price Homicide

  Pumped for Murder

  Final Sail

  Board Stiff

  Catnapped!

  Checked Out

  The Art of Murder

  Killer Blonde: A Dead-End Job Novella

  Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper Mysteries

  Dying in Style

  High Heels Are Murder

  Accessory to Murder

  Murder with All the Trimmings

  The Fashion Hound Murders

  An Uplifting Murder

  Death on a Platter

  Murder Is a Piece of Cake

  Fixing to Die

  A Dog Gone Murder

  Francesca Vierling Mysteries

  Backstab

  Rubout

  The Pink Flamingo Murders

  Doc in the Box

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Elaine Viets

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503936317

  ISBN-10: 1503936317

  Cover design by Mark Ecob

  To Don, who has kept his vows for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health . . . I love you.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  June 11, 2016

  The doctor who nearly killed Angela Richman was buried today, and the Missouri medical establishment turned out to honor him. The eulogies were heartfelt: doctors, nurses, and patients praised Dr. Porter Gravois’s compassion and skill as a neurologist. Their tears were genuine. His funeral cortege was nearly a mile long on the road named after his powerful St. Louis family. Everyone called him by his nickname, Chip, as if they were all part of his inner circle. Chip made them feel that way. r />
  Angela didn’t attend his funeral. She was still in the hospital, recovering from the damage he’d done to her. She’d been in there three months. Angela was glad Porter was dead, and so were the people who knew the real Dr. Gravois. They didn’t call him Chip.

  As she lay on the scratchy hospital sheets, she wondered how Dr. Gravois looked in his coffin. He had a long, pale face and a knife-blade nose, like a stone figure on a British tomb. Had the mortician managed to duplicate the fatherly smile that fooled so many? That smile didn’t quite reach Gravois’s hard, blue eyes, but those were closed forever.

  Which suit was he buried in? Chip wore Savile Row suits from Kilgour in London. Chip pronounced it Kilgar and said only parvenus called the tailor Kilgore. His bespoke suits were lovely silk and light wool. It was a shame to put one in the ground. But Angela had no qualms about shoveling Gravois six feet under.

  What about Dr. Gravois’s bitter enemy, Dr. Jeb Travis Tritt?

  He and his awful, off-the-rack suits were barred from the funeral. No matter how much he paid for his suits, he still looked more like a small-town insurance agent than a neurosurgeon.

  His unwed mother had named him after her favorite country music star. Dr. Tritt was a country boy, from his badly cut hair to his thick-soled brown shoes.

  Is he wearing a jail jumpsuit now? Angela wondered. Everyone heard Tritt threaten Gravois. He’d called him a crook and a killer and said the best thing Porter Gravois could do for his patients was die.

  The next day Dr. Gravois was murdered.

  CHAPTER 2

  Fourteen weeks earlier

  Angela Marie Richman lives in Chouteau Forest, a wealthy ghetto some thirty miles west of St. Louis. She investigates all the deaths in the county—murders, accidents, and overdoses—that don’t happen under a doctor’s care.

  Chouteau County is about ten square miles. Its main town, Chouteau Forest—the Forest, to insiders—is mostly estates. And Chouteau, if you’re local, is SHOW-toe.

  She lives on the Du Pres estate in the house she inherited from her parents. She’s one of the poor Richmans. Maybe not poor by your standards: her parents pulled down a fat five figures a year as servants for the Du Preses, one of the old Forest families. The Forest doesn’t fritter away money on staff, but her parents did the work of at least six people: her mother, Elise, was the housekeeper, cook, dog walker, and errand runner, plus she cared for Madeline Du Pres, the family’s demanding dowager, for more than a decade. Angela’s father, Mel, took care of the vast grounds, as well as the upkeep on the hundred-year-old buildings.

  Now Angela serves the Forest by dealing with their dead.

  She was on call that Saturday night, the busiest time of the week for death investigators. That’s when people partied, drank, shot up, and shot one another. Angela expected to be dragged out on this warm March night for a car accident, an overdose, or a domestic violence fatality. When her cell phone didn’t ring by midnight, she went to bed.

  She was out cold at 2:17 that morning when a tremendous bang woke her. She sat up, groggy and disoriented, then ran to the bedroom window and saw headlights reaching for the sky on the other side of the estate’s stone wall. With the lights at that crazy angle, it had to be an accident.

  She heard the sirens as she threw on her black pantsuit. By the time her cell phone rang, Angela was tying her shoes.

  She clicked on her phone. The detective didn’t bother with a greeting. “Richman,” he said. “Ray Greiman.” His voice frosted her phone.

  Just my luck, she thought. I’ve pulled Ray Foster Greiman, the laziest detective on the Forest force. The man was impossible to work with.

  “We got a situation here,” he said.

  “Can I see it from my upstairs window?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Beemer ran into the Du Pres wall a hundred yards east of the main gate,” he said. He said it right—Duh PRAY. Only insiders got to protect the Forest families.

  “It’s bad,” he said. “The JJ twins, massive head injuries, one fatality.”

  “Oh no.” Angela felt like he’d slammed her in the head with a shovel. The JJ twins were old Reggie Du Pres’s granddaughters. Sixteen-year-old first cousins. Jillian Du Pres was a month older than Jordan Hobart. A little spoiled, but good kids. Both girls had long, dark hair, flawless, steam-cleaned skin, and curvy little figures. They looked so much alike, the whole Forest called them the JJ twins.

  “Which one’s dead?” she asked.

  “Can’t tell,” he said. “Their faces are too messed up. I’m gonna guess it’s—”

  She stopped him. “We’re on cell phones, Ray.”

  “Then get your ass over here,” he said.

  “I’ll be there in five,” she said.

  Angela could have walked the quarter mile to the accident, but there was no time to waste. At forty-one, she had been investigating Forest deaths for almost twenty years. She knew the routine. She pulled her long, dark-brown hair into a practical ponytail. Her death investigator kit was packed in the trunk of her Dodge Charger. She grabbed her iPad, roared out of the garage, and was at the scene in two minutes.

  When she saw the red Ferrari parked haphazardly next to the crushed Beemer convertible, Angela thought the kids had crashed while racing. But there wasn’t a mark on the Ferrari or its driver, Sandiclere “Sandy” Warburton, the snotty teen son of a Forest defense contractor. Yes, the kid drove a Ferrari. Hey, Daddy Warbucks sells the military $600 toilet seats.

  The police cars were parked to hide the accident from gawkers, and now two uniforms were setting up a privacy screen. She left her car on the grass. The powerful portable lights revealed the carnage.

  A sporty blue Beemer two-seater convertible with the top down had bashed nose-first into the wall. The windshield was gone.

  Four strapping paramedics wheeled a stretcher carrying a young girl in a blood-drenched pink party dress with a wristful of bangles. At first Angela thought the girl wore red gloves and a red scarf over her face. Then she realized that was the girl’s face, now a raw mess of meat and blood-matted hair. Her arms were solid blood to her elbows, and one wrist dangled at an impossible angle.

  Angela tried hard to hide her horror. I’m supposed to be a professional, she told herself. I’ve seen worse, but I knew this girl, and she was still alive. Angela watched as the girl was loaded into the ambulance, and it roared away.

  The impact had thrown the other girl out of the car, onto the grass near the wall. No seatbelt? Angela wondered, hoping she’d died instantly. She was lying on her back, the skirt of her black dress hiked to her waist, exposing a red thong. She wore a black leather jacket and a single see-through platform shoe. A glass slipper for a Cinderella whose prince would never come.

  Near her hand was a red iPhone. No, a pink iPhone dyed red with blood. Her face had been put through a meat grinder.

  When people learned about Angela’s profession, they said, “You’re a death investigator? How can you do that? The blood! The smell! And those dead bodies.” Most of them shivered.

  But they aren’t dead bodies, she told herself. Not to me. They’re people who have died, like the JJ twin. An hour ago she was a gorgeous girl. She was loved—well, she still is—and will be mourned. Now she’s trying to tell me what happened. It’s my job to listen. This is the last service I can do for her.

  A teenage boy, white with shock and wide-eyed, was talking to Detective Greiman. Sandy, the defense contractor’s son. The detective and the boy stood next to the Ferrari. For once, Sandy was missing his smug look of entitlement. He swayed like he was fighting a high wind and flung his arms in wide, sloppy gestures. He was drunk.

  A teenage blonde in a blue party dress and silver shoes shivered next to him, teeth chattering and bracelets rattling. Lucy Chantilly, the senator’s daughter. She was weeping, and her blue mascara blazed bizarre trails down her face.

  Angela opened her car trunk and grabbed her death investigator kit and the blanket she kept to comfort sh
ocked witnesses.

  A Forest uniform nodded and let her through the yellow tape. As she passed the Ferrari, Angela saw a half-empty bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum leaking onto the front seat, and she smelled pot. The death car reeked of weed and the coppery odor of blood. The kids had been drunk and high. Both cars.

  Detective Greiman left Sandy and came over to see Angela. He was wearing black Hugo Boss. The Forest paid well, but not that well. Homicide detectives usually had two styles: rumpled, old-school Columbos and stylish metrosexuals. The only thing sharp about Greiman was his clothes.

  Badge bunnies happily hopped into his bed, but she wasn’t interested in stroking his ego—or anything else.

  “What happened?” she asked. At six feet, Angela towered over the detective by four inches. He had to look up to her. Greiman hated that.

  “Sandy and the girls were racing each other home from a party in Ladue.” Another upscale burb, not quite in the Forest’s league. “The girls lost control and hit the wall,” he said.

  “TWD?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Texting while driving. They hit the stone wall head-on.”

  He pointed to the skid marks that left the road and turned into tire tracks plowing through the freshly mowed grass. “I checked the skid marks. The car was going about seventy when the driver lost control and hit the wall.”

  Angela winced.

  “She was texting Sandy and the senator’s daughter in the Ferrari. Her last words were USCK DNKY BLS. I think that’s, ‘You suck donkey balls.’ At least that’s how I translate it. That kid crap is hard to read.”

  “Whose phone?”

  “Jillian’s,” he said. “Both girls were using it.”

  “Sandy was driving the Ferrari?”

  Greiman nodded.

  “There’s an open bottle of rum in the car,” Angela said. “They’re underage. Have you Breathalyzed the driver and his passenger? Called for the drug dogs?”

  “He’s Daddy Warbucks’s kid, for Chrissake,” Greiman said. “And Lucy’s the senator’s daughter.”

  “So? Their parents have PR firms to paper over this mess and an army of lawyers. Do it, Ray. Everybody in this case is equally important, and all four families’ investigators will crawl all over those cars. The paramedics don’t live in the Forest. Someone will talk. Word will get out.”